Wednesday, January 06, 2010

2010, Goals, and Direction

This will be a quick post, as I have to get somewhere soon. As the new year dawns, it dawns as a year of uncertainty. There may be some serious changes on the horizon. Or not. I don’t know.

As I wrote about before, I was fired from my position in November. Since I’m a contractor, my company kept me on board in the hopes that they’ll have another position to fit me in. They’ve had me helping out on one project. I’m grateful to them for keeping me around. It shows class, and shows a company that values people. Also, I know the recruiting and hiring can be expensive. I have skills that might be useful to my company in another position. But, if another project doesn’t come up, I’ve got the life of the project I’m on. No telling how long that will be.

Why did I get fired? I screwed up. The best thing I can do is take responsibility for it. There are always at least two sides to every story, but as the side that was dismissed, I can only assume I was in the wrong. I committed to a deadline that turned out not to be reasonable. When asked about progress, I replied “Oh, everything’s fine. No problems.” I didn’t ask for help. Help was available, but everybody portrays themselves as being too busy to breath, so I was afraid to take away from anybody’s busy schedule to ask for help. When the deadline loomed, I kept up the “It’s fine” facade, secretly hoping that “one more week” would give me the time I needed to get it together.

A deadline that seemed reasonable 4 months earlier suddenly became impossible. Equipment that wasn’t delivered on time and documentation that was either nonexistent or incomplete combined with my lack of imagination set me further behind schedule. Then there were other job responsibilities to be attended to. So, I blew it.

Then, to make matters worse, I got ticked off and cc’ed the wrong person on an email where my frustration was on full display. That’s only happened once, but it was the wrong once. I think that’s what ultimately did it, but I was probably on the way out by then anyway.

So where to from here? I don’t know. I’m hoping that my company comes up with other work that I can do. If not, I guess I need to see what else is out there.

After 5 years of blogging, it’s apparent that nobody is going to pay me to blog here. So I’m considering something else. I’m considering changing the focus of my blog to building my brand. That’s about what I’ve been doing, but I need a better focus. Whatever I end up doing next, I’d like to find a way to point people to my blog as an example of why I’m an expert in something.